


One Night in Tinseltown

by framboise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hollywood, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bodyguard, Car Chases, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Older Man/Younger Woman, Rare Pairings, Romance, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-25 19:24:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12042609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: Davos is the best bodyguard in the business but tonight he's got his work cut out for him when A-list Sansa Stark is stalked through King's Landing by an ex-boyfriend, an ex-agent, a crowd of fans with rather lax opinions on privacy, and a hungry mob of rabid paparazzi; he certainly doesn't have time for any romantic shenanigans on top of that."What's rule number one in the bodyguard handbook then?" she muses."Don't sleep with the starlet," he says and laughs good naturedly, "luckily that's not a particular hazard I'm likely to come up against, in this finely-aged condition," he takes a hand off the wheel to motion to himself."I think I remember a movie about something like that," she says innocently.He looks at her, unimpressed. "Kevin Costner gave us all a bad name with that piece of drivel."





	One Night in Tinseltown

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  Adding another fic to this tiny ship, in thanks to the lovely response to my first Davos/Sansa fic.

 

 

This is the last ever red-carpet appearance she'll have to make with Joffrey, the last time he'll clutch her waist with that horrid clammy hand of his, whisper obscenities in her ear as she's trying to smile for the cameras and pretend they're a happy couple.

She's going to fire her publicist after this too, for persuading her to pretend she's still his girlfriend even though she chucked him out of her home and changed the locks three weeks ago; even though she knows that her publicist didn't put a gun to her head, that Sansa made this choice all of her own free will as an adult. How much of her soul is she willing to give up for this business, for success? It's a question that those close to her have been skirting around since the beginning of her acting career.

At least she won't have to share a car with him when she leaves, having endured a ride here together from the hotel where they were getting ready in separate rooms, in his horrible stretch limo with the rims and the blue lights and Gregor Clegane glaring at her from the driver's seat while his massive paws dwarfed the wheel.

Davos, one of her favourite bodyguards, will be driving her back tonight, and he's always got a steady stream of insults for Joffrey to make her laugh.

Joffrey's still whispering in her ear as the movie starts. She's already seen it in a private screening. It's good, and both their performances work. It's an utter mystery though how the camera can show him as a normal human, a hero, when in real life he's a creep with a shifty smile and a black hole where his soul should be.

"I'm so happy you've agreed to be my girlfriend again," he's saying.

"I haven't," she hisses back.

"Now, now, don't get yourself worked up," he says and she pinches him on the thigh. "Oh, my little spitfire," he says, "such _passion_."

"Fuck off, Joffrey," she says a little louder now and the people around her look on disapprovingly; she hopes to gods that the gossip mongers sitting at the back of the screening haven't noticed what's happening.

There'll probably be stories about an engagement in the press tomorrow, knowing them and their vicious slander. Some of the gossips still haven't forgiven her for breaking up with Renly (who had finally come out so he could go public with his boyfriend) because the two of them had looked so perfect together in their photo-ops, and the backstory their publicists had come up was a perfect meet cute.

"You don't mean that, not really," Joffrey says and inches his hand across her stomach.

Her gut turns to ice. _Fuck this_ , she thinks, _fuck him and fuck this_.

She knocks his hand away and stands up, shuffles along the line and walks down the aisle, head held high; turning back at the door to see that he's getting up to follow her, and probably saying something about her nerves to the people around him.

She picks up the hem of her ridiculous dress – long and whisper-light, with peach sequins and lace that make her look naked from a distance – and runs. She knows this cinema well, knows where the back door is and where Davos will wait for, knows too that he'll be there already, early, even though she's never left a screening before it finishes, _just in case_ , he says, _if it's all the same with you I'll get there early_.

And he's there, thank gods, leaning against the black limo smoking a cigarette. His eyes widen when he sees her and he scrambles round into the driving seat, popping open the door in the back. She falls inside and immediately pulls the door shut behind her and they peel out of there with a squeal of tires, watching Joffrey run after them and then start shouting at his own driver who's eating a burger on the hood of his car.

"Not a good movie then?" Davos asks, as they head out into King's Landing.

"Not a good date."

"What did the little shitstain do now?"

"He thinks I'm getting back together with him."

"What a little worm. He didn't hurt you though?" he asks, and she sees him look up at her in the driver's mirror.

Shireen once told her that Davos was the closest thing to chivalrous that the business could allow. He's not the largest of bodyguards, not like Sandor who sometimes guards her, but he's still tall and broad, solid, even at close to her father's age. His hair is grey and receding but it's balanced out by the thick stubble on his jaw. He's kind, Davos, funny and charming, and he makes her feel safe, although she knows that he would just say that it's part of the job description if she thanked him for it.

"No, he just grabbed my waist," she says.

They share a rueful look; knowing that any unwanted touch is a violation, but that as an actress she's more beholden than most to accept the unwanted touch of others.

"I think I bruised his thigh though, I've got a strong pinch."

"Good girl, I'd say aim for his dick next time but it's so small I'm not sure you'd find it, and I know there isn't going to be a next time."

"No there isn't," she says with relief, resting her head back on the seat.

But the car suddenly jerks forward.

"Sorry about that, it looks like we've got a tail," he says.

"Is it him?"

"By the ugliness of his car, I'd think so. I'm going to try and lose him, hold on."

She's used to sitting through evasive manoeuvres, though not as often when she's in a limo rather than a town car, and soon she finds her fingers are sore where they're clutching the handle near the roof.

"Sorry about this, he's persistent, we're near the hotel but I don't want him to find it."

She's booked a hotel room tonight, a different hotel to the one she used to get ready before the film, anticipating that either Joffrey would be a twat tonight and try to follow her home or the paparazzi would spend their night lurking at the front of her house with large flashlights.

It comes with the territory of living in King's Landing itself, rather than having a big empty house further up the coast like most actors do. But she had grown up in rural Winterfell and she liked city living, and she won't let anyone push her out, no matter how many cameras they stick outside the front. The back garden is totally sheltered anyway, by ivy-strewn walls and a rocky outcrop, but she'd rather not run the gauntlet at the front when she's already so tired today.

"Let's go back into the city," she says, "I'm not in a huge rush to get inside the hotel,"

"Good idea, I know his driver today and he's got another job booked tonight so we just need to tire them out."

"What do you think of my dress by the way," she asks, as the streetlights whizz past and make her dizzy, "Joffrey said I looked like undercooked salmon."

"Says the man with the terrible fishlips," he says. He glances up at her in the mirror, "It reminds me of peach sorbet," he says. "Does that dessert reference age me?"

"No, your grey hair does."

"Touché."

Sansa's had her phone on silent during the movie and now she gets it out of her tiny purse and immediately sighs. There's a long list of missed calls, most of them from her publicist which she scrolls down without looking until her eyes catch on the last one sent a few minutes ago: _you're on TMZ._

"Oh gods," she says out loud, "I'm on TMZ."

"What's that now?"

She holds up her phone to show him the page she's loaded. "It says that I left the screening because I'm upset about my recent miscarriage. There's a quote from Joffrey about how we're "trying for another one"."

"That fucker," he says ineloquently.

 _Don't believe what you hear in the news tonight_ , Sansa sends quickly to her family's groupchat.

 _We never do, honey_ , her mother texts back straightaway.

 _Want me to kill him?_ asks Robb, a while late.

 _I can set my wolves on him_ , Jon offers.

 _As if that inbred twat can get someone pregnant_ , Bran texts.

 _Bran_ , her mother admonishes.

 _Sorry_ , Bran says, _I was angry_.

 _Just remember that we love you always xxx_ , her dad finally texts, probably after being nudged awake by her mum at this time of night. Her dad is always a little too sentimental, cheesy, with his texts compared to how he is in real life, but Sansa finds it endearing.

"God, there'll be someone outside every hotel now."

"Don't worry, my girl, I've yet to be beaten by those idiots and it's not happening tonight, not on my watch."

"I'm glad it's you tonight," she says, although maybe she should take that back when she's clutching the handle like her life depends on it as he's giving a stuntdriver a run for his money.

She finds the seatbelt hidden in the crease of the seat and clicks it on, wedging her shoe against the door.

"That driver's right up my backside," Davos mutters, "hasn't even bought me dinner."

She doesn't recognise the streets passing by, they're going so fast, until the car barrels out onto the wide central boulevard where Davos immediately speeds up. He makes a sharp right turn that has her pushing against the window to hold herself in her seat, and then there's a muffled thud and crunch somewhere close.

"Got the fucker," he says, "though he only has himself to blame for driving so dangerously. I'll open your window, my dear, because you should really see this," he says.

Joffrey's limo rests at a right angle across the street. The front is dented and a fire hydrant has popped open, spraying the whole car. As she watches, Joffrey steps out and starts ranting at the driver and then a paparazzo appears seemingly out of nowhere, and then another one like they're breeding, and their flashes blind Joffrey who is waving his arms around like he's having a fit. She smiles.

"That's worth the price of admission, surely," Davos says, laughing.

"No director could have set up that scene better," she says, "the way the streetlights shine through the spray of water, the bedraggled look on his face," she kisses her fingertips.

He brings the window back up and drives off. She sticks her tongue out at her ex-boyfriend as they pass.

But though Joffrey has been vanquished she must have been spotted in the brief moment when she had her window open, or else someone had noted the license plate of her car, because an ordinary looking vehicle comes alongside them with two girls inside who lean out and try and take selfies with the car as though their tiny phone cameras could make out Sansa through the tinted windows of the back.

"Get back inside!" Davos shouts, "Silly girls."

"They'll have geotagged those snapchats," Sansa said.

"It was far easier to be a bodyguard without the internet."

"I know for a fact you've only been a bodyguard for the last ten years," she says.

"Oh you do, do you. And I was talking in the abstract."

She folds her arms around herself and smiles.

"This limo's too conspicuous, I can't get you to anywhere where you can hide if everyone can follow us there. It's a bit unorthodox but do you mind if we switch cars?"

"Sure," she says.

"It won't be quite up to your standards I'm afraid."

"As long as it's got at least four wheels and a seat for me to sit in."

"Well it has that," he says, as they wheel into an underground parking garage. He throws the keys to an attendant and then palms him money to keep it quiet. Sansa's ridiculous heels click loudly on the concrete floor as he leads her to an utterly unremarkable family car.

"Have you got a wife and kids I don't know about?"

"Are you judging Maud?" he asks.

"You called your car Maud?"

"No, but I thought if I came up with a name just now you'd be less inclined to mock her."

She smiles and gets into the front seat, not wanting to slide about in the back if there's another chase.

The radio turns on when it starts and she tells him to leave it; classic rock croons from the speakers. He turns on the heating when he sees her shivering and she tugs off her shoes, wincing as the blood rushes back.

It's started to rain when they get back above ground, and she watches the sweep of the windscreen wipers back and forth and picks at her cuticles with her teeth, legs tucked up towards her chest inside the long glimmering skirt of her dress. There's something about being in the front seat, a seat she hasn't sat in for years since she became famous, about being so close to his comforting presence.

"Do you judge me for pretending I was still with Joffrey, even though he was awful, for turning up to that premiere on his arm?" she asks, a little embarrassed by the plaintiveness of her tone.

He shakes his head. "Your job doesn't stop when the movie's in the can, it's a business, isn't it, not that I agree it's something you have to do. There are lots of funny rules in showbusiness. I follow funny rules too."

"Like what?"

He clears his throat, "Item number 14 in the handbook - though shalt not clash the colour of your car with the colour of her shoes."

"What's rule number one in the bodyguard handbook then?"

"Don't sleep with the starlet," he says and laughs good naturedly, "luckily that's not a particular hazard I'm likely to come up against, in this finely-aged condition," he takes a hand off the wheel to motion to himself.

"I think I remember a movie about something like that," she says innocently.

He gives her an unimpressed look. "Kevin Costner gave us all a bad name with that piece of drivel."

"I know you're a fan of romantic movies."

"You do, do you?"

"Yeah, you're a romantic at heart. I've got your number."

"No time for snuggling up in front of the TV with a movie like that while these idiots are following us. Hold onto the handle," he warns, looking in the car mirror and turning the wheel of the car abruptly to the left, and her stomach swoops like she's on a ride as they swerve and careen around a corner.

They double back on themselves and then Davos ducks into a narrow alleyway and down a loping street that drops towards the coast. He brings it to stop in the shadow of a bridge and turns off the engine. There's a loud bar a little ways away whose tinny music filters through to them now the radio has stopped.

He stretches in his seat, "Sorry about that," he says, "thought we both needed to get off that rollercoaster for a moment."

"Thanks."

"Can I offer you-" he ducks his hands into the backseat, "-a slightly warm orange juice, with an expiry date of last month?"

"That was just what I wanted, how did you guess?" she asks, cracking open the lid and taking a sip of it, mouth pursing at the tartness.

"I aim to please, Miss Stark," he says, in that gravelly voice of his.

"I bet you do," she drawls, feeling a little punch-drunk from their flight across town. How someone in King's Landing can be so charming with no ulterior motives baffles her.

They're silent for a minute, watching a few people stagger out of the bar, two of them shrieking at each other in excitement, arms raised and feet unsteady.

"You can understand why I went to the premiere with him," she says softly, "but I _was_ stupid to stay his girlfriend even after he pushed me that one time."

He sighs. "Sansa–" he says ruefully. "He's the only one to blame for how he treated you, you know that, right? A lovely girl like you, he should have cherished you. Even if you weren't a lovely girl, even if you were rude and mean and cheated on him, he still wouldn't have license to push you."

"But I should have left."

"But you have now, that's the important thing. _Now you know_ , my father used to say to me, after I made a bad decision or did something stupid. _Now you know, so what are you going to change, what are you going to do about it_?"

"So you're not going to say it's my fault?"

He reaches over to squeeze her hand, "No, girl. I can't tell you off for making bad decisions when I've made plenty in my time. I lost four fingertips in one afternoon because of bad decisions."

"How did it really happen?" she asks, resting her chin on the heel of her hand.

"You don't believe the vending machine story? Or that I slipped while making a wooden birdhouse to impress a girl ?"

"No."

He pauses. "Let's just say it involves a truck full of onions, the Russian mob–"

"The mob!"

"Well, a weak offshoot of it, they're all dead now, I'm not a spring chicken either."

"Onions, the mob, and..." she prompts.

"Another truck, full of eggs; half a kilo of cocaine which was nothing to do with me, I swear your honor; a woman's blonde wig; a mannequin; a mix-up; and a machete." He pauses again.

She looks at him and he looks back at her, smiling obliquely.

"Really? You won't elaborate on that? Even for a poor little actress like me with blisters on her feet?"

"Nope. It's privileged information. I only give it out to people I'm in relationships with."

"This isn't a relationship?" she gestures between them, teasingly.

"If it was a relationship, my girl, we wouldn't be fannying about out here, we'd be snug in bed and I'd be tiring you out so that you'd sleep right through until a Seaworth-special brunch the next morning: bacon, Greek yogurt, and sundried tomato muffins - I know that sounds like a strange combination but I promise you it works."

"What if I don't like tomato?" she asks, blushing.

"Well, I'll make you something else then, I'm easygoing."

"I'm not sure anyone's ever made me brunch before."

"I'm not surprised, these young actors don't their hands from their asses, their garlic presses from their spatulas, their–" His phone beeps in his pocket and he sighs, heavily, after he's checked it. "Another tip-off, come on, we better move,"

They head out towards the west, away from the hotel, and the car starts to slow as they enter museum mile. The rain has stopped now and the lights glance off the road.

"Where are we going?"

"I know a man who knows a man, we're going to hide out in there." He points to the National Museum. "Is that alright?" he asks, concerned, "I can take you to the hotel and get you through the crowds to the back door if you want?"

"No, it's fine," she says. Sansa loves the museum and she knows someone who works here too, and who just might be on shift tonight, Arya.

Arya and Sansa are best friends, not the type of best friends to talk on the phone each night, but the type you'd ring up after months of radio silence to ask for help burying a body.

They had met when they were fourteen, in the toilets at North Academy - Sansa reaching down the top of her dress to adjust the toilet paper she'd shoved in her bra, and Arya wiping away blood on her face from a fight against Jeyne's bully. Their eyes had met in the mirror and that was that. The odd couple, some people called them, a few mean girls even saying that they were obviously lesbians, to which Sansa had taken Arya's face in her hands and snogged her right in front of everyone in the lunch hall.

They had both moved to King's Landing at the same time and Arya had acted as her bodyguard at the beginning when she was too poor to afford her own, and still a little naive about the business and the kind of people that would be interested in an innocent thing like she was back then. Arya had gotten more jobs as protection on the basis of that, before crossing over to stuntwoman and other, rather more mysterious, jobs that have her taking shifts in all sort of places, one of them being the museum.

Davos parks on a side street and leads her to unremarkable door.

"Hello Pod," he says, "I've got a starlet here who's having a bit of a bad night and would appreciate a perusal of your fine collection to cheer her up." He moves aside to reveal Sansa in her sparkly dress to the pleasant-looking man manning the guards booth.

Pod stutters out an OK and then adds, "just make sure you don't go too near a window or a door, the alarms are on."

Sansa shivers when they get inside and Davos takes off his suit jacket and drapes it over her shoulders. She puts her hands in the sleeves gratefully, curling it around herself.

"Don't suppose you've got a spare set of shoes in size 7 as well?" she asks, pointing at her stilettos.

"I'd give you the shirt of my back, my girl, but I wear a size 13."

"You know what they say about men with big feet.." she says, words drifting off as they enter the Valyrian gallery.

She stares up at the huge ruins and statue fragments as they pass - heads, hands, a foot - the plaques and snatches of inscriptions, the mangled remains of burnt technological pieces that Westeros has yet to understand or be able to copy.

"I've been to Valyria," he says, hands in pockets.

"And lived to tell the tale?"

He nods. "I was on a manoeuvre there, back when I was in the service, and there was supposed to be a militant Dothraki splinter group hiding out there but we never found anyone at all, spooky place."

As if his words have brought them into being, soft echoing footsteps start somewhere nearby, a pair of footsteps.

They stop, and Davos steps in front of her, hand hovering over the taser he keeps in his holster.

But as the footsteps get closer two people in guard's uniforms also appear - one extraordinarily tall, the other a little shorter than average.

"Arya!" Sansa says, delightedly.

"Evening, Sansa," she replies, apparently unsurprised by her appearance.

Davos knows Arya too from his shifts guarding Sansa, "Arya! What are you doing here?" he asks.

"I wear many hats," she replies, enigmatically.

"I think she's casing the joint," Davos mutters, like an old-timey investigator.

"She's not. Arya, are you casing the joint?"

"I couldn't tell you. This is Brienne, by the way, she's a stuntwoman too."

"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Stark," she says, in a deep voice.

"You should go up on the roof while you're here, it's an amazing view," Arya says, taking out a tablet from her pocket to disable the alarms on the roof door.

"Shall we?" Davos says.

"Lead the way, good sir," Sansa replies, holding out her arm for him to take.

The grandeur of the old museum - the marble columns leading to tall ceilings, the gleaming floors and bronze fittings - make her feel as if she is at a ball somewhere long ago.

Sansa started her career out doing period pieces - a dizzy whirl of corsets and petticoats and heaving bosoms - but her agent at the time, Petyr Baelish, told her after a while that she should stop doing those roles in case she became pigeon-holed. An opinion which she went along with like much of the things she went along with under his care, uncertain but trusting.

She won't say that she was a fool to ever trust him, because he did give her her big break as an ingénue, and he did do the impossible by getting her an audition with the reclusive director of the lavish epic Aegon's Conquest for which she bagged the role of Visenya, winning a Golden Lion for it despite the silly wig and violet contacts.

It was only after that that she found out about Petyr's underhanded tactics, his fingers in many pies. That she finally got fed up of the way he would look at her as if he owned her, the brief adjusting touches he would make as if he was a sculptor and her body his to tweak. Her current agent Olenna Tyrell was an improvement in so many ways.

Davos and Sansa come out onto the roof and she gasps in the fresh night air, her toes curling in her shoes at the sudden opening up of the horizon.

"Well, would you look at that," he says, as they stroll over to the edge. "I think I'm going to get sick of good old KL and then I see something like this."

They look out across the city, at the rooftops and the old quarter in the distance, the sea black and glittering beyond that, tiny specks of boats' lights in the bay.

"Where's your house?" she asks.

"You can't see it from here, it's down by the coast, the other side of the city. Nice little cottage with a back garden where I can grow vegetables and drink wine during the summer."

Sansa thinks it sounds perfect. She's never tried growing food, her own garden is populated by as many climbing plants and extravagantly blooming flowers as she can fit in it, but it's her gardener Meera that gets to appreciate it more than her, with so many long shoots filmed elsewhere.

"How come they've never used this view in a movie?" she asks.

"The museum director hates the movie business, says they get everything wrong about history."

"It's a good thing he's not here tonight, I wouldn't want to listen to a rant about my Valyrian accent."

"Your movie that's just come out, what's it about?"

"You don't know? How can you be a good bodyguard and not know about the exact plots of your charge's movies?" she teases.

"I like old movies," he says.

"I'm shocked."

She turns to him, she's been looking at the side of his face all night in the car. He turns too and smiles at her; he's easy with his smiles in a way that she's had to stifle now that so many people think of them as an invitation. She likes his smiles and she likes the way he responds to things, like he's been there and done that and nothing is left to shock him.

"It's about a boy and a girl."

"I think I've heard this one before."

"They're from different worlds."

"Gotcha," he nods, knowingly.

"But they fight against the odds to find one another."

"Mmm."

"And then the girl falls in love with another girl and leaves the boy."

"Really?" he asks, delightedly.

"Yup. Margaery plays the other girl."

He raises his eyebrows. He knows that Margaery used to be her on-and-off-again girlfriend.

Sansa sighs, "I should have stayed at the premiere to support her, I know."

"Nah, she'll love the extra attention." They share a smile. Margaery is one of the kindest actresses she's ever met but she's also ruthlessly ambitious. "What ever happened with you two?"

"Oh," Sansa says, smiling ruefully, "she's poly and I'm just– not, I suppose."

"The gossip rags couldn't have handled such a stunning couple anyway."

"Thank you, Davos," she says, touching him on the arm, and laughs.

Sansa takes out her phone and finds a new text from Shireen.

 _I heard that you're leading the paparazzi on a merry chase tonight,_ she says.

 _You've heard about that all the way up at Wolf Island?_ Sansa texts back

_It's all over the internet. Your fans are going crazy, apparently your movement across the city is writing a message to them. Like a serial killer drawing a pentagram._

A pause and then another text.

_Rickon came up with that metaphor btw_

_Thanks Rickon_ , Sansa types sarcastically.

_Rickon also says that you should make him work for it._

_?_ Sansa texts back, but there's no further explanation.

They're probably off on a late night hike or whatever those crazy kids like to do. Sansa's old publicist used to beg her to take hikes in the King's Landing hills, where many a starlet has shown off her trim legs in yoga pants, a delicate sweat sheening her collarbones. It was a favourite post-being-dumped setting to show them 'dusting themselves off' or 'working on that revenge body'. Sansa did not hike, she hated any exercise that involved sweating outdoors. Give her an icily air conditioned gym, or an Olympic-length pool any day. _  
_

"That was Shireen," she says, "she says that the internet's stalking us tonight."

Davos had guarded Shireen when she was still a teenage actress, that was how Sansa had heard of him after her second cousin Rickon, the other famous Stark in the movie business, had started dating her. Sansa knew though that it hadn't been Davos who was on duty when Shireen had had her accident, the accident no one thought she would survive.

"How is she doing?" he asks.

"She's good, don't you ever talk to her?"

"Yes, but I don't expect her to tell an old man like me anything."

He rests his hands on the low wall in front of them, leaning his weight forward. "That was one of the worst nights of my life, when I heard what happened to her."

"I'm sorry," Sansa says, touching his arm in sympathy.

"Don't say sorry to me, the accident didn't happen to me," he grumbles and then rubs his hand over his chin. "I've been in the army, I was responsible there for a whole group of men, some of whom were injured on my watch. But as much as I raged at it, as responsible as I felt, it's not as bad as I felt when I heard about Shireen. She was just a _girl_ , not a soldier. And I should have been the one to drive her that night. I took the night off to watch the fight, _the big game_. I'd stand in the ring and let one of those fighters grind me into dust instead of ever watching a boxing match again. Shireen needed me and I wasn't there for her."

"You weren't to blame."

"And now she's gone and hidden herself away on the island of hers."

Sansa knows that Shireen is happier now, spending half of her time up north on her windswept private island with Rickon, the other half in the city writing and doctoring award-winning scripts; even if directors are clamouring to have her back in front of the camera now that she's grown into her awkward teenage features, now that the scars on the left side of her face look so striking, so unique.

"Don't say it like that. Don't imply that she'd be winning Golden Lions for acting if it weren't for you personally, if it wasn't for the accident. That's not fair."

"You're right," he says and blows out a heavy breath. "When did you get so wise, Sansa Stark?"

"When a man told me some of the good advice his father told him, something about making choices about the future since you can't change the past."

"Sounds like a wise man," he says, barking out a laugh, and reaching an arm around to hug her to him. He smells like good cologne, leather, and tobacco.

Just before they turn back for the door, he says quietly, as if it's a confession to the wind that whips across the roof, "I feel responsible for her pain more than anything, the terror of that crash and the aftermath, getting her life back together, you know. Something like that stays with you."

 

They head out of the museum, but Davos gets stopped at the door by Pod who has a few questions for him about the bodyguard trade union. Davos throws her the keys and tells her she can wait for him in the car if she likes.

But Sansa should have known that the pleasant hour inside the museum was just an interlude in her terrible evening because who should approach the car just as she has unlocked it but a man wearing a shiny dark green suit, with carefully tended grey wings of hair and a winning smile: Petyr Baelish.

"I thought I saw you get out of that tiny car earlier," he says, "I've been in a meeting up the road at the opera house."

Sansa can't be bothered to find out if that's a lie, if he's following the tipsters reports to find her too.

"Poor thing you," he says, clucking his tongue in apparent sympathy, "Joffrey spreading lies, ruining all that good work you've been doing on your reputation."

"If you're about to tell me that this wouldn't have happened if you were still my agent-" she says, as she sees Davos approach slowly to her right. "You would have been the first one on the phone to TMZ, you would have told me to go ahead and marry Joffrey."

"Sweetling," he says, "this business has turned you so _hard._ "

He's so good at these digging little comments. She saw the way he used them on others but she was always too willing to please for him to need them for her. She's glad that she's graduated to a potential threat in his opinion now.

"Everything alright here?" Davos asks, characteristic threatening frown in place.

"Just saying hello," Petyr says, "You have a good night now," he adds, eyes skimming between the two of them, noting the jacket on her shoulders and the small car, making assumptions no doubt. But fuck it, she doesn't care tonight.

"I'm in the mood to see a movie actually, a movie without Joffrey," she says when they're in the car, after she has responded in the negative to Davos asking whether she would like him to run over Petyr (it's only what that little shit deserves, he had argued).

They catch each other's eye. "Drive-in?" he asks with a smile.

"Yup, as long as we stop on the way for snacks."

They only see one car of fans searching for selfies on their journey back across the city to the concrete park in the east that's been turned into a theatre. Davos stops at a cornershop on the way to get her wine and chocolate and tells her to put his jacket over her head as she waits in the car in case she gets spotted, which she does, and then stays giggling under it until they park in the theatre, while he makes bad jokes about ghosts.

He's found a spot at the very back on the right, shaded by a grove of trees on two sides. She checks her phone as he switches off the engine and immediately holds out a hand for the wine after what she reads.

"Get that in you," Davos says, "King's Landing's finest."

She turns the bottle round to look at the label after her first gulp.

"Well, the finest that the shop had to offer. It was that or Storm Cider, girl, and I don't want this night to get any worse for you,"

"Thoughtful of you," Sansa says, feeling the burn of the wine warm her insides.

 

She recognised the movie on first glance because it's one that Rickon starred in; it's the movie where he first met Shireen on set.

Rickon started out as an action hero, known for doing his own stunts, but there were hints from the beginning that he would do well when he crossed over to other genres. In the early movies they got him to say the stupidest things, the silliest one liners, but somehow the intensity on his face, the ferocity of his speeches about how he was going to save the village/the girl/the zoo made it believable, made it difficult to laugh.

He had always had an intensity, an utter fearlessness. Rickon's poor parents had been forever chasing after him when he was a boy. Sansa remembers him jumping off the roof of their house in Winterfell during a summer party, and the strangled noise of _ohmygodsRickonno!_ Catelyn and Ned had both made, before everyone saw Rickon emerge from a bush utterly unscathed and his parents then bundled him back in the car to return to their (purposefully single-storied) home.

Shireen had just started to work as a scriptwriter and she had been called in as a favour by the director who had acted opposite her years ago on some movie about an animal – a monkey, a sheep? she forgets now – who lived in a hotel. Shireen says that they met when she tripped down the steps of a trailer because she was holding too many scripts and couldn't see and he caught her in his arms. Rickon says that she was looking at him when she tripped, that she was bowled over by his handsome visage (he says this with the same drawl each time).

Rickon had asked Shireen if she'd like to go to the racetrack for their first date, not making an assumption either way about her thoughts on fast cars after her accident, and she said no thanks. Then he said, skydiving? and she said, sure. She has the photo of him skydiving – his face frozen in a rictus of thrill and terror – as her phone background and shows it to everyone they meet. Sansa thinks they're disgustingly perfect together.

 

"I do like a romantic movie," Davos admits, as he settles back in his seat and puts the taser away in a side pocket of the car.

Rickon and the actress, Myrcella, have shared a scorcher of a kiss before they were separated by the fates (the writers), which was followed by a montage of the various sadnesses of their lives without one another.

"You haven't been lucky with romance in your life?" she asks, cheekily.

"Now that's an assumption," he says, bopping her on the nose and making her laugh because she can't remember the last time someone did that seriously. "I've had many a romance. You don't get to my age without a good list."

"But they all ended sadly?"

"Oh no, some were happy."

"Mine have hardly ever ended happy. Most of them have been shits actually."

"Maybe it's the business. No one finds a real happy ending here."

They're both getting caught up in the movie now, the journey of the hero and heroine through the city to try and meet each other, the obstacles that keep trying to stop them - the police, an ex-boyfriend, an accident on the road, a parade – the music loud through the car radio, bass humming their seats. Sansa never thought of a drive-in theatre as intimate but it is somehow when there's only an audience of two in each car.

"What's the best date you've ever been on?" he asks.

"Hmm," she thinks, mind blank because it's starting to feel that _this_ might be a date, and a pretty good one. "Margaery, she took me in a helicopter to a vineyard and then we camped out under the stars."

He nods, "impressive."

"You?"

"Ah, a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."

She scoffs.

"There was one date though," he turns to her and she can see his eyes glitter in remembrance, "Oh, she was a stunner, totally out of my league and I don't generally believe in things like leagues. She snuck me backstage at her theatre, she was a dancer, and pushed me up against this wall at the back during a show with the audience only a few feet away. It doesn't do it for me generally, voyeurism, but I guess it did with her because she was squirming around and– sorry, too much information," he says, laughing sheepishly.

It's odd, having a conversation with a person sitting next to you in a car, instead of straight on, it feels like you could say things you wouldn't otherwise say.

The hero and heroine on screen are together now but trapped in a cupboard while another couple have athletic sex outside. It's meant to be a funny scene in between two other scenes of proper peril, but it doesn't feel funny to Sansa right now.

"Well if we're talking about best locations for sex," she says, neck heating up, warmth settling low between her thighs.

She's picturing him holding _her_ up against a wall now. He's carried her once before, when she twisted an ankle on set one day, she remembers feeling the tension in the muscles of his arm against her back.

"A four-poster bed at one of those Gothic hotels," she says, "in winter with the windows open so the breeze made our skin prickle, and then we got out an ice cube from the fridge," her voice trails off now, she's staring at the screen but not registering anything; she's so aware of his leg close to hers, his body in the seat next to her, the narrow space they're in.

"A classic," he says, though she's not sure he knows what he's saying either.

She moves a hand over to touch his arm. He meets her eyes and licks his lips. She trails her hand up towards the collar of his shirt, sliding her fingers underneath to scrape back and forth across his skin. He flexes his legs in his seat but she doesn't look away from his eyes.

"This is not a good idea," he murmurs. "This is unprofessional and you've had yourself some wine."

"Two gulps," she says, "I got distracted by the movie."

He checks the bottle, and then rubs his hand across his jaw. "This isn't something I even planned for, I hope you know that. I don't want to take advantage, I've never thought of you that way. I care about you."

"I've thought of _you_ like that."

"Well, obviously, every girl has a bodyguard fantasy, especially one that takes place inside a reasonably priced family car."

A pause and he looks at her, considering. She bites her lip.

"This isn't going to be a bad idea, it's not going to be a regret," she says.

"One of those nights just like the movies?" he says wryly, "when rules go out the window; one of those nights you remember when you're in your rocking chair, which won't be many years now for me–"

"Shut up," she says, and tugs him over to kiss her although he quickly takes control back, sliding a broad hand behind her head to move her as he wishes.

The stroke of his tongue is firm in her mouth, his breath is heavy across her cheek when they shift apart, he tugs her lips with his teeth and then sucks at the tiny bruises. His thumb brushes her behind her ear and he moves his other hand to grasp her thigh, and it rasps loudly across the sequins of her dress.

She tugs her dress up towards her hips as he cups a breast and then she reaches over to palm between his legs. The moment his own hand touches the skin of her inner thigh and starts to slide upwards she lifts herself up and clambers over and into his lap.

"Hi," she says, looking down.

"Hi yourself," he replies and starts nibbling down her jaw, rubbing his hand down her back, grabbing her ass.

But she slips, her knee stubs against the brake and her fingers accidentally gouge into his side.

"Whoops, not the first venue of choice for this kind of activity," he says as she stumbles to sit back in her own seat, and he brushes her hair back from her face and tucks it behind an ear, looking at her with a focus that makes her want to shiver.

"Let's go back to yours," Sansa says breathlessly. "No one will be expecting me there."

"A good plan," he says and she rests back in her seat as they drive off and tries to get her breath back, cheeks already feeling tender from his stubble.

The drive seems to take forever, in contrast to all the other dashes across the city tonight. It could be midnight, it could be 4am, she can't tell. She squeezes her forearms between her knees, trying not to reach out and touch him as she watches his hands on the wheel and the brake.

As the car stops in his driveway Sansa's phone beeps with the tone she's saved just for Arya and brings her out of her haze.

 _With compliments_ , it says, enigmatically.

? she texts back.

There's a pause for half a minute and then her phone starts to blow up with other messages and she follows one of the links to find a set of photos of Joffrey published on a gossip blog online. Photos of Joffrey, naked, with a variety of things that should really not be put next to a naked body, his smouldering fish pout still in place.

 _I've got your back_ , Arya texts then and Sansa laughs hysterically, feeling a little teary-eyed too.

She shares the picture with Davos and his eyes widen. "I've seen a lot in my time, but I never knew that people did _that_."

"I feel like I need to wash my eyes out," she says, and then notices the house in front of her – the Wisteria climbing up by its front, the little stone dog by the door and the white-washed shutters. The kind of house she used to picture when life in King's Landing was only a dream.

Then she sees the gravel of the driveway.

"I'm not sure I can walk in bare feet on that," she says.

He gets out and comes round to her door. "I should have known you were only after your Whitney Houston moment," he says, heaving her into his arms with such strength that it makes her gasp a giggle into his shoulder. Her insides are jelly, her pulse is ticking between her legs.

When they get inside he lets her slide down, close to his body. She places a hand between his legs. "Is that a gun, or are you just pleased to see me."

"The latter, Miss Stark," he says and kisses her, then tugs her legs up around his hips and walks through the dark of his house towards his bedroom, not bumping her into a single wall even though he's staring at her and kissing her and roaming his hands across her back and thighs.

"Impressive," she says.

"Is it crude if I say that I've had practice?" he asks, his words buzzing against her lips.

"I like a man with experience."

He throws her down on his bed – neatly made up and in the middle of a tidy room, smelling of fresh sheets; gods bless the mature man, she thinks – and she flips her hair out of her face.

He tugs off his shoes and then he stands at the foot of her bed in his shirt and holster, undoing his belt, and Sansa wants to fan herself like an old lady but instead she says, "I have to say that I'm looking forward to the brunch you advertised."

He crawls up towards her. "Sod brunch, it'll be lunchtime by the time I'm through with you," he says, lifting her body further up the bed, reaching his hands down to drag up the skirt of her dress.

 

*

 

In the end she wakes up at 2pm, thighs a little bruised and beard-burnt, insides sore in the very best way. And who knew an old man's hips could move like that? She sniggers into the sheet in front of her in a half-awake state.

"If you're finished with whatever you're currently doing there, brunch awaits," a voice drawls from the door.

He's wearing low slung pyjama bottoms and a faded grey t-shirt that says _What the Funk_ and advertises a funk night in Braavos.

"I was just laughing at something."

"Care to share the joke?"

"Maybe later."

Then she bites her lip and gives him a shy smile, remembering last night; remembering the words he'd whispered low in her ear, how he called her _good girl_ ; remembering the feeling of that scruff against her neck, scraping down her breasts, and down her stomach, and his mouth right _there_ -

"If you keep looking at me like that, neither of us are getting brunch."

Her stomach rumbles.

"The lady has spoken." He nods his head towards the door as she gets up and puts on the large t-shirt he left out for her.

"Time for a Seaworth-special," he says and shouts back, "not an innuendo!" when he hears her laughing at him, "not all of us have dirty minds like you," he adds as he holds out the chair for her at the breakfast table, a long, rustic wooden thing that he probably made himself.

He looks like the kind of man who'd make his own furniture as a hobby. She doesn't really know much about him outside of work and the things he told her last night. But she'd like to know. There are interesting scars on his body that she wants to know the origin of, stories she wants to hear.

He bustles around the kitchen, humming to himself without an inch of shame, then plates up the breakfast burgers and side of eggs. She eats the food automatically, smiling at him across the table, sliding her foot back and forth against the smooth kitchen floor. He's filling in a newspaper crossword distractedly as he eats, asking her for answers.

She rests her chin on her hand and wonders if it's not just bodyguarding he's good at it, and horizontal folk-dancing (as she'd once heard him call it when he was trying to make her laugh before a love scene she had to do with a horrible actor); but if he might just be a good boyfriend too.

"The mastery of my use of relish and dill has brought you to silence," he jokes, looking up to see her watching him, " I can't say I'm surprised, I _do_ know my way around a kitchen."

"There's dill in this?"

"Oh hush you," he says, tweaking a strand of her hair fondly as he gets up to pour her more coffee.

"I was just thinking. You've got a big waiting list for your services, your bodyguarding, right?"

"Yes?"

"So if I fired you, you'd be good for work."

"Now why would you do a thing like that?" he asks, voice getting low and interested, his body remaining loose and unthreatening. There's a twinge of hurt in the corner of his mouth.

"Well it's not professional to sleep with the starlet, is it, you've broken rule number one of the handbook. And as good as you are as a bodyguard, and you're bloody good, I'd like to find out if you're good at other things too."

He looks a little confused.

"Tell me how you lost your fingertips," she says.

"I told you, girl–"

"No, _tell me_ ," she says.

He tilts his head and smiles a little cockily and she's charmed by it. "Really? One night and one brunch and you're set."

"Yup," she says.

He leans over and kisses her, kisses her like he knows what he's doing, and it's no dry movie kiss faked for the cameras.

"Far be it for me to argue with the lady," he mumbles happily against her lips.

Then he sits back, arms folded over his chest, "The story goes like this – so it was a sunny spring morning and I was in the prime of my youth – I can see you smirking, stop that – I was a man you wouldn't mess with, and there I was in my car heading out to the border when..."

It takes him a good half an hour to explain what really happened and she's still not quite sure she believes it, even though he swears it's the truth. But she forgets the story entirely when he picks her up from her breakfast seat, complaining about his bad back even though he barely seems to be exerting himself at all, and carries her back to bed.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please comment if you end up here, I'd love to know what people think!
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)


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